File:L&N Sign, Old Louisville and Nashville Railroad Passenger Station, Henley Street and Western Avenue, Knoxville, TN.jpg

English: Built in 1904-05, this Chateauesque and Queen Anne-style passenger train station was designed by Richard Monfort for the Louisville and Nashville (L&N) Railroad. The building was to serve passengers on the Louisville and Nashville (L&N) Line built in the early 20th Century between Cincinnati and Atlanta, with this being the largest and grandest station along the line between its two termini, and a large rail yard being built in the adjacent Second Creek Valley, which had formerly housed the Knoxville Iron Foundry Complex and other industrial operations. The station served passengers until 1968, when service ceased on the Flamingo service between Cincinnati and Jacksonville, Florida, and the offices in the building were vacated by the railroad in 1975. In 1980, the building was purchased by Alex Harkness and partners, and was subsequently renovated and adaptively reused for the 1982 World’s Fair, which took place on the site of the former L&N rail yard and industrial land around the depot. The lower floor of the building housed restaurants during the fair, with meeting rooms and offices on the upper floors, with the building being renovated for use as offices and an event venue after the fair in 1985. Between 2002 and 2004, the building temporarily housed Ye Olde Steakhouse while the restaurant’s main location was being renovated after a major fire. The L-shaped building features a red brick exterior, a pyramidal terra cotta shingle hipped roof at the northeast corner of the building and a hipped terra cotta shingle roof at the west end of the building, low-slope shed roofs with paneled parapets between the hipped sections and on the south wing, quoins, stone belt coursing above and below the second story windows and transoms in the central wing and on the south wing, one-over-one double-hung windows, a cornice with modillions and dentils, rusticated brick at the first floor, bracketed eaves at the northeast corner of the building, with Chateauesque-style gable parapets with stone trim, tall third story windows, and stone trim surrounds at the second story windows, large brackets at the keystones above the doors at the northeast corner of the building, stained glass transoms on the building’s first floor, a stone base at the bottom of the first floor, a large four-bay window at the northwest corner of the building with a decorative window header, and a neon L&N sign at the northeast corner of the building. To the rear, the ground level is lower, with the basement of the building being at ground level, with a large two-story ornate cast iron porch structure with decorative columns, brackets, and wrought iron railings as well as multiple partially enclosed sections clad in glass connecting the first floor and basement, with an exterior staircase rising from the ground to the first floor, and far simpler detailing on the building itself, with decorative window headers at the west end of the building. The building’s interior originally featured waiting rooms in the west wing of the building, with a dining room in the northeast corner, and a lunch room, baggage room, ticketing office, a segregated waiting room for nonwhite people in the south end of the building’s south wing, which featured a separate entrance, and offices on the second floor of the building, and a drafting room for L&N engineers on the third floor of the northeast corner of the building. These spaces have been reconfigured due to the building’s adaptive reuse as restaurants, offices, an events center, and most recently, a school. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, and became home to the L&N STEM academy in 2010, a public magnet high school which is housed in the building and the adjacent former freight station.